1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus capable of communicating with predetermined terminal apparatuses via network, a print processing system including the printing apparatus and a print processing method.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventional printing apparatuses having a print function (e.g., a copy apparatus, a facsimile apparatus, a multifunction apparatus having copy and facsimile functions and the like) are capable not only of executing print jobs received from terminal apparatuses (e.g., PCs) connected via a network such as a LAN (Local Area Network) and the like, but also of executing print operations when predetermined files are specified on the printing apparatuses.
Executing the print operations on the printing apparatuses requires generation of predetermined print files processable on the printing apparatuses, from files having various formats created using different applications. Generally, however, file formats processable on the printing apparatuses are limited. For files having formats unprocessable on the printing apparatuses, technologies are available that allow the printing apparatuses to execute the print operations using application programs installed on the terminal apparatuses connected via the network.
For example, when a file stored in an external apparatus (e.g., a PC) connected via network is specified for printing and a format of the specified file is unprocessable on a printing apparatus, a technology is known to have an application program installed on the external apparatus convert the file into a file printable on the printing apparatus (Related Art 1).
[Related Art 1] Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication 2002-342050
With the technology disclosed in Related Art 1 above, when the external apparatus that stores the file has no application program capable of converting the file into the printable format, the printing apparatus searches for another external apparatus having an application program capable of converting the file.
It takes time and it is inefficient, however, to search through a plurality of external apparatuses connected to the network since availability of the application program for file conversion needs to be checked individually. Further, when an external apparatus that executes file conversion is in use by another user or has a low processing capability, the external apparatus is overloaded and its processing speed is significantly deteriorated.